APR 02

2024

Tuesday: it was a cold and rainy day, which matched our moods. We've been talking lately about how it feels like we're losing our memories of the cats who've passed, and how much we don't want the same to happen for Koop (much less the others who are still with us), so at Julie's recommendation, I started a shared document in my google drive for us to begin collecting these details and stories as they occur to us. It's pretty bare-bones now, but this can be a new ongoing effort.

(As I'm typing this, Grey Goose is lying on top of me and nuzzling my arms. If she lives as long as Koop did, will I be mourning her in 2035?)

I made the following post on Select Button today during a break:

I have to take at least 10 hours of calls each week. The rest of my time (up to 30 hours) is spent on various projects on which I have been assigned: I very much prefer this work.

I work Saturdays and Sundays, and more than half of this time has to be spent in project time because I'm covering chat support.

Since my new project emails come in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I prefer to get my project time in on these days, so I spent all day on Monday taking calls, and I should have been done with my call time for the week after just two and a half hours of calls today (Tuesday).

But they scheduled a bunch of training sessions today, so our call volume relative to the number of people available spiked, and as a result they've cancelled all project time and have everybody on the phones! If I’d known this was going to happen, I could have worked on projects yesterday when it was slower!! This is nobody's fault, because the people who would have kept me in the loop are out of the office this week!!!

So that's how work went. Afterwards, we needed to gather up the litter and take out the trash, which was especially full of used tissues thanks to the ongoing illness. (At least Julie has mostly recovered by now.) Once we finished with that, we reheated the meat and potatoes and asparagus, and we resumed watching Poirot. I clicked through some Hearthstone and some Paradise Killer aimlessly, but I did enjoy the "Hickory Dickory Dock" episode, even if they went totally overboard getting footage of their mouse on the grandfather clock, as well as "The Murder on the Links". I then fell asleep on the living room floor watching Fumbletown videos. When I woke up a couple of hours later, I came into the office to post this and do some holiday events in MMOs briefly before returning to bed.

IS THE COUGH STILL HERE: YES

2023

Sunday: Julie and I walked up to Villa di Roma for lunch so she could finally see the place for herself. It was a nice outing; I think we'll try to make a regular thing of Sunday lunch outings at various restaurants in that area. We wanted to stop by John's Water Ice on the way back, but it turned out to not be open yet, so we went by Milk Jawn instead for ice cream. Not sure which day it was, but we played a bit of Boggle, and I did alright. Maybe it was Friday night, actually? Anyway, for dinner I sliced up potatoes, chorizo, and an onion for our scalloped potatoes dish, and it wound up being really late before it was ready, but it was pretty good. I don't prefer the chorizo to our usual sausage, so I think in the future I should just make a double serving with two different meats so Julie can have her flavor and I can savor the subtlety.